The link to the NASA thing about Kepler is short but interesting. I didn’t realize that it was a million miles away from earth on a matching solar orbit but at a different speed. So its orbit will be kicked up and down, closer to the Sun that we are, then farther out, on a pretty long recurring schedule. The Earth acts kind of like the shepherd moons in Saturn’s rings. Looks like we might have an orbital partner essentially forever. Wow!

I don’t wanna rain on anyone’s parade, but the video in the article linked in the OP is a hoot. It’s bubbling over with the same near-orgasmic enthusiasm that I’ve noticed in virtually all of the folks who recognize that they’ve gotta be in permanent sales mode about the virtues of their NASA-funded projects.

I’m not saying they’re not genuinely excited about their work, or that interesting stuff doesn’t come out of it. But they’re often given to hyperbole, wishful thinking, and in some cases, some downright shameful fudging of the facts for the sake of public appeal. State-funded work requires political support, which means public support.

Enter politics; expect bullsh!t.

To wit, the assertion that there are “more planets than stars”...um, no. The data from Kepler shows nothing of the kind. That starry-eyed hokum probably comes from a 2015 press release in which NASA reported 1,013 confirmed planets orbiting 440 stars, a planet-to-stars ratio of 2.3 to 1. Right...with those figures, there are more planets than stars.

But it’s not representative. The truth is that, over its nine years of service, Kepler found 2,662 planets among a total of 530,506 stars observed...a ratio of 0.05 to 1 — not more planets than stars.

I’m a scientist. In real science—by which I mean the search for corroborated knowledge without regard to politics—the truth is supposed to be good enough.

Cherrypicking the data and making stuff up is part of politicized science, not real science. The truth doesn’t make me any less supportive of genuine science. The spin and B.S. does make me far less supportive of state-funded, politicized science.

Hmmm. Just because some planets have been detected orbiting some stars doesn’t mean all planets orbiting those same stars have been detected. My understanding is that pretty much just the dip in light caused by the transit of gas giants has been spotted...smaller rocky planets not so much. So even those systems now thought to have NO planets could very likely have planets whole transit is too small to be detected by current tech. Take our system. We have four big planets and four small planets. On an inhabited world light years away with tech equivalent to ours, we’d look like a four planet system. I would pose that it’s quite premature to be quoting final ratios from current data.

Plus, given that most solar systems form via accretion discs (is that correct, not sure of actual predicted numbers here) surrounding a new star...and given that that process is thought to typically lead to the formation of multiple planets...then it would be logical to expect most solar systems to have multiple planets and further that the number of planets is greater than the number of stars.

Brothah Blackhorse: I don’t see your post as argumentative. Reasonable people can disagree. Besides, your points are good ones. Even where you’ve speculated based on assumptions, I think the assumptions are reasonable.

My objection to the video is the overall impression it seems to create that “more planets than stars” is now some kind of firmly established scientific fact...the thing that is called “settled science” in the lexicon of politicized popular pseudo-science. Actually, there is no such thing. In my experience, people who use that term are often trying to silence anyone who disagrees with them.

Certainly, “more planets than stars” is nowhere near “settled science”. Yet, the video talks about it as though it’s a new meme that everyone can confidently parrot, the way they do with other “settled science” that they don’t understand.

The key word in the 2015 sound bite is “confirmed”. OK, fine...1,013 planets are confirmed for 440 stars. But that’s misleading; it’s not the whole story. The full data set says the planet-to-stars ratio for all the cases observed is 0.05 to one — not 2.3 to one, which is 46 times what the actual data show.

Yet, these project people—who must surely know the whole story—are talking about “more planets than stars” as though it’s confirmed fact. I’ll admit that it grabbed my attention, which is why I dug deeper than just watching the video. But I’ll bet it won’t be long before folks who’ve never bothered to dig below the surface and find all the facts for themselves start repeating it as though it were gospel.

It’s part of a new paradigm called “consensus science”, which is based on the bogus political notion that science is a democracy. Its fundamental epistemological premise is that the rightness of an idea is determined by the number of people who believe it’s true.

“...the rightness of an idea is determined by the number of people who believe it’s true.”

There’s danger there all right. Once EVERYONE knew that the earth was flat...or that Jibi Jibi the god of leaves made them fall when he grew tired of summer...yadda yadda yadda.

Yup - Voting on truth is pointless. At some point in the future kids will laugh at some of the things that we hold to be self evident. Carl Sagan said something to the effect that ‘even the greatest minds in the world can be dead wrong’ - I think he was discussing the past belief in astrology.